Kth Largest Element in an Array

[leetcode]Kth Largest Element in an Array

链接：https://leetcode.com/problems/kth-largest-element-in-an-array/description/

Question

Find the **k**th largest element in an unsorted array. Note that it is the kth largest element in the sorted order, not the kth distinct element.

Example 1

Input: [3,2,1,5,6,4] and k = 2
Output: 5

Example 2

Input: [3,2,3,1,2,4,5,5,6] and k = 4
Output: 4

Note: 
You may assume k is always valid, 1 ≤ k ≤ array's length.

Solution

class Solution {
public:
  vector<int> nums;
  int partition(int left, int right) {
    int x = nums[left];
    int i = left, j = right;
    while (i < j) {
      while (i < j && nums[j] < x) j--;
      nums[i] = nums[j];
      while (i < j && nums[i] >= x) i++;
      nums[j] = nums[i];
    }
    // 记得还原回去
    nums[i] = x;
    return i;
  }
  int quickselect(int left, int right, int k) {
    int index = partition(left, right);

    if (index == k) return nums[k];
    else if (index > k) return quickselect(left, index-1, k);
    else return quickselect(index+1, right, k); // 这里不需要对k改变什么，因为left和right的值就是全局的
  }
  int findKthLargest(vector<int>& nums, int k) {
    this->nums = nums;
    return quickselect(0, nums.size()-1, k-1);
  }
};

思路：借鉴了快速排序的思想，通过partition来确定某一个基准数的位置。根据这个基准数的index来确定对前面还是后面进行进一步选择。需要注意k的值在递归过程中是保持不变的，因为这个索引是在全局中的。